The three-time Sprint Cup champion has never won the Daytona 500, but he has had success at the track – much like Dale Earnhardt and Darrell Waltrip had before scoring their first Daytona 500 wins later in their careers. Stewart, 41, won last July’s race at Daytona and was second to Kevin Harvick in last weekend’s Sprint Unlimited all-star race. The new car favors Stewart on several levels. Stewart has raced (and won) in everything from midgets and sprint cars to IndyCars and stock cars. The tougher the Gen-6 car is to master, the more of an edge Stewart will have early.

Jeff Gordon

The Gen-6 car is closer to what Gordon drove as a rookie in 1993 and what he won his four championships in than the COT. Gordon is now a senior statesman in the sport at the age of 41 and he hasn’t won a title since 2001. But the three-time Daytona 500 winner is sitting on the outside of the front row and he knows the short way around Daytona. The winner of 87 races in his career, Gordon always seems to win right when no one is taking notice of him.

Dale Earnhardt Jr.

Before the COT came along, Junior thrived in restrictor-plate races on the high-banked ovals at Daytona and Talladega. He won the 2004 Daytona 500 and seven other races at the track over the years. He is a five-time winner at Talladega, where he won four straight races from 2001-2003. Earnhardt struggled during the COT era, even after the move to Hendrick Motorsports. The switch to the Gen-6 car figures to jump-start Earnhardt’s career at the age of 38. Earnhardt finished second to Matt Kenseth in the 2012 Daytona 500.

Jimmie Johnson

No team in NASCAR made a smoother switch to the COT than Johnson’s. Figure that crew chief Chad Knaus will be on top of the Gen-6 design, although Johnson claims there is not as much development room in the Gen-6 as there was in the COT. A former off-road racer, Johnson, 37, likes driving a “loose car” that gets sideways in a corner. Although he won the Daytona 500 in 2006, Johnson has a spotty record on the superspeedways of Daytona and Talladega. But Knaus and his crew are more capable than most crews at making positive changes during the race.

Matt Kenseth

If Toyota has a slight edge at the moment in the development of the Gen-6 car, then Kenseth could be the favorite to win his second straight Daytona 500 in his debut with Joe Gibbs racing. Kenseth won his second Daytona 500 in a span of four years in a Ford from the Jack Roush stable last year. Fast and smooth, the 2003 Sprint Cup champion has the edge over teammates Kyle Busch and Denny Hamlin in this race.